


In doorways and dreams, I run to you

by NellieOleson



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 23:38:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NellieOleson/pseuds/NellieOleson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's still a little harder to say what's going on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally an AMTDI ficlet. It grew. This is chapter one of two.

_There's still a little bit of your taste in my mouth_

_Still a little bit of you laced with my doubt_

_It's still a little harder to say what's going on_

 

A single bead of sweat ran down Sam's forehead. It disappeared into her hairline, leaving its ghost on her skin. Jack--surely he was Jack now, had his face pressed against her neck. His breath was hot on her skin; the air was hot in her lungs, and where were they?

Jack shifted as he slid into her, and she couldn't think. She squeezed her eyes tight against the growing certainty that something was very, very wrong. Why was it so damn hot? She reached up and ran her thumbs over his cheeks. They were damp and rough. She wanted to look into his eyes, to see herself reflected back in them. How would she look?

Who was she?

He pulled away before she could find out. She wanted him back. Wanted to be grounded beneath him, to feel his weight on her chest. "Carter," he murmured against her breast. Carter. Yes, that was her, Sam Carter, and he was Jack. Just Jack, only that wasn't right, was it? Sure it was. It had to be, because he was dragging his tongue down her stomach now.

Her fingers were in his hair and she looked down through her knees and past his head. There was a large fire burning on the other side of the room. It was the only source of light and wasn't that odd?

Something about the far wall had caught her attention. Some small detail that stuck in her mind like a pebble in a shoe. She put it aside. Jack had two fingers inside of her and his tongue was still very busy. She called out his name when she came and it was still too hot, and the wall hadn't been a wall at all because they were in a tent.

They were in a tent and she was Carter. Just Carter, because he wasn't just Jack.

They had stepped through the gate together. They were looking for something.

_Light._

There had been a blinding light and then nothing. Nothing but the heat and the taste of his skin on her lips. And now he was on his knees and she wasn't stopping him from sliding a hand underneath her. Then he was pushing into her, impatient and needy, and she wasn't stopping that either. Sweat was running down his temples and she was going to come again.

Jack leaned forward, covering her body with his own and breathing heavily into her shoulder. He paused like that and whispered her name. She tried not to hear the question in his voice.  "Don't," she said, gripping the back of his neck. _Don't ask. Don't think._ "Please." _Don't stop._ The fire had grown brighter, casting its warm glow farther into the room. Jack didn't ask any questions and she wrapped her arms low around his back.

The impatience was gone, replaced by a slow, deliberate motion that was putting Sam's entire body on edge. Jack lifted his head, stared down at her and there she was, caught in his eyes. He pushed deeper, pausing at the end of each stroke to breathe. Then nothing was deliberate or slow, and when he called out her name again, Sam wanted to cry.

Jack rolled to her side and put his head on her stomach. Sam closed her eyes and ran her fingers through his hair while the sweat dried on their skin.

"Where are we?" he finally asked.

"I think we're in a-," tent, she was going to say tent. The back wall had been rippling with what she'd assumed was the motion of canvas caught in a breeze. Only now, with the fog clearing from her mind, she could see she'd been wrong. The rippling tent wall had become the translucent bulkhead of a ship and the movement she'd attributed to wind became the filtered light of the stars as they streaked past. The fire was gone, replaced by a clear conduit carrying a light-emitting substance. She could feel it now, too. The steady hum of engines and the mechanical movement of air. 

"Carter?" He sat up next to her. His eyes were clear now, focused and intent. His skin was still touching hers.

Sam missed the simplicity of the tent and the fire because further complications were not what they needed right now. "We're on a ship."

 

********

 

Following the trail of her discarded clothes was a little like walking backwards through time to a beginning she couldn't remember.

Underwear, pants, boots--nice little breadcrumbs, all in a line leading nowhere. She followed them to her t-shirt, small and alone at the edge of the smooth, curved wall. Looking at this part of the wall was like looking through a rain-soaked windshield on a busy night-time highway. When she reached out, the wall disappeared completely beneath her fingertips. Stars left streaks of light as they passed. The effect was disorienting and mesmerizing. She picked up her shirt with an unsteady hand, held it to her chest and-

_She’s still wearing the t-shirt, but not for long. Jack has her backed up against this very wall while he pulls it out of her waistband and slides his hands underneath. He’s pressed so tight against her she can’t see his face. She leans her head back and closes her eyes because she’s wanted this for so, so long. The wall feels cool against her back but his hands are warm and solid as they move over her skin. He steps back and drags her shirt up higher, his fingers leaving warm trails across her ribs. She raises her arms so he can pull it over her head and it falls to the floor, forgotten and unnecessary._

She could see it clearly in her mind, a single breadcrumb, out of line and out of context. When she closed her eyes, trying to recall what had come before, there was only the memory of his touch and another breadcrumb as useless as the first and going the wrong direction because-

_She’s on her knees. One hand spread wide, low on his stomach and she’s always wanted him like this. Hasn’t she? She can feel his muscles tense under her fingertips, and yes, this feels like something she’s thought about a lot. She looks up at him, and he’s staring back at her so intently she has to look away. His hands are hovering around her head, brushing against her hair. He wants to hold her, to go harder, deeper. She knows this, and god, maybe she wants that too. She stops and urges him to the floor because this is too fast and they’ve waited such a long time._

"Carter?" Sam flinched when he reached out and put his hand on her bare shoulder. It was still warm; maybe his hands were always warm. How could she know? She turned around, trying hard to not look like she wanted him to keep touching her like that. He kept his hand on her for too long because maybe he knew anyway.

Sam swallowed hard when he finally pulled away.

"I'm sorry," he said in a voice full of rough edges and hidden meanings. The light from the conduit highlighted the sheen on his forehead and she thought he was beautiful. She misunderstood his words for a moment, thinking he was apologizing for startling her. That would have made sense in another lifetime when Occam’s razor still applied. Here on this ship, his apology meant so much more.

She just shook her head and put her hand on his face, running it over his cheekbone to the roughness of his jaw. And wasn’t it a little too rough? He hadn't found his own shirt yet and she had to stop herself from continuing down his chest. Would she stop there? No, she didn’t think she would--didn’t think she could, and this had never been so hard.

"No," she said. Her words couldn't erase the anguish in his eyes but they were all she had to offer. They weren’t even very good words because they weren’t the right ones. "Whatever happened here wasn't your fault."

He was holding her TAC vest, a plastic and nylon reminder that sooner or later, those breadcrumbs would lead back to a mission gone horribly wrong. Or maybe, she thought before she could stop herself, it had finally gone right. Wasn’t this what they’d wanted all along?

"Our weapons are missing," he said, changing the subject to a more comfortable topic. Of course they were, because nothing was ever easy for the two of them. Earlier, she thinks, that was easy--far too easy. How much of a push had it taken to make them forget about rules and regulations and all the other roadblocks they’d constructed over the years?

When her fingers brushed against his as she took her vest, she told herself it was an accident and decided it probably hadn’t taken much of a push at all.

Three full clips for her missing weapon, one radio, a flashlight, two canteens--still full, one pressure-dressing, a Gerber multi-tool, and a handful of Hershey’s Kisses. She laid the contents of her vest out in front of her, taking inventory and trying to create her own distraction.

It wasn’t enough and she couldn’t stop herself from watching him pull his shirt over his head because she’s always liked him best in that simple black t-shirt. His movements were slow and methodical, like he was functioning on auto-pilot. When he looked back at her, everything she shouldn’t be feeling was staring at her from his eyes. She adjusted the straps on her vest for the first time in years. Her chest felt too tight and no amount of slack would relieve the pressure.

Something had changed, shifted on its axis in a way that couldn’t be fixed.

 

********

 

She calculated the area of a fifteen foot circle while she swept the room for answers. The math was simple but comforting, engaging one of the few parts of her brain that hadn’t been overwhelmed by him. Fifteen feet, she thinks, is the size of a stargate. Not even two-hundred square feet of inefficient floor space and her hands are shaking before she’s done. It was a waste of time and self-control; the room had nothing to offer.

There was only the light-filled glass, thrusting out of the dense foam floor and disappearing behind the mirrored surface of the ceiling. _(We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.)_ It was still glowing, but dim now, the dying embers of a fire that had burned too hot. She took a closer look at it because there was nothing else. It grew brighter, more important and shouldn’t she turn around now and see what he was doing?

She shifted her focus because the light was dangerous-a silent and delicate voice in her ear, convincing her that all the things she had always wanted to believe were true. She’d been right all along, it whispered in liquid words that flowed around any objections she put in their way, he was worth the risk.

Colonel O’Neill was still sitting on the floor, lacing up his boots like a new recruit being bellowed at by a red-faced TI. Too many eyelets and too many fingers that wouldn’t cooperate, she remembered the feeling well. He wiped his palms down the front of his BDU pants.

“Don’t look at the conduit,” she said, her words bouncing back from the wall and becoming the voice of a stranger in her ears. She didn’t like the way the stranger sounded, didn’t like the words it was saying because she wanted to look. She wanted him to look too so they could both forget again and-

_The floor is firm but not uncomfortable. He’s on his back. She’s on top and the light is washing over them, highlighting their movements. She’s taking her time and she stops moving now and then just to look at him. He closes his eyes every time and she doesn’t understand why. There’s something there, just out of her reach. Something she doesn’t want to think about because his hands are on her hips pulling her closer. She leans down and kisses his face, his neck, his chest._

He’s always trusted her instincts, let her take the lead on situations he didn’t understand, but he usually wanted some sort of explanation whether or not he understood it. All she got from him now was a distracted, “Yeah, okay.” But his boots were tied and maybe that was something.

Aside from the transparent section, the wall was bare and uninteresting, broken only by the outline of a single door. No screens, no keypads or buttons, just an empty room with a door. She should have noticed that before. She’s certainly seen it a time or two.

They’re usually a lot more primitive but a cell is a cell, no matter the decor.

The sharp sound of Colonel O’Neill’s straps snapping shut across his chest followed her to the door. All dressed up and no place to go because they might just be trapped in here. Had they come in through the door? She didn’t know and it refused to tell her.

She gave the door a cursory once-over before using her hands to search for a means of opening it. Her well-calibrated fingertips picked out a slight concave anomaly in the center. As soon as she touched it, the door opened, sliding smoothly into the wall. If the room was a cell, she thought, it wasn’t a very good one. Except, the cynical part of her brain pointed out, it had been pretty damn effective in a Roach Motel kind of way.

When Colonel O'Neill stepped up beside her, giving her a slight nod to let her know he was ready for whatever was waiting on the other side, she hesitated. She wasn’t ready. Her head was too full of him and she needed a moment to compartmentalize.

"I just-," she didn't know how to finish the sentence. Her compartments were all full and overflowing, the crowded overhead bins of an overbooked flight. All the feelings she’d hidden away for a future that might never come threatened to crash down and bury her.

"Yeah." He pulled her tight to his chest. She could feel his heart beating a little too fast, too loud. "Me too," he whispered into her hair.

It’s a lot like drowning--she knows this for a fact-and she stepped through the door before she forgot who she was.

 

*******

 

The first step was the hardest. And wasn’t it always?

They stepped into the hall and her eyes narrowed in the bright light. It was like stepping out of a dark theater on a sunny day. Outside the room, the dry air moved reluctantly around them, resentful of the disturbance. She rubbed her arms, adjusting to the unexpected chill. She couldn’t tell if the hall was cold or the room had been too warm.

It was all relative so maybe it didn’t matter anyway.

The door whispered back into position behind them and the change was immediate. Whatever it was that had taken away their memories and inhibitions had stayed in the room, trapped behind the smooth metal door. The feelings were still there, hovering around her edges but her ability to control them had returned.

It was a fine line but one they’d learned to dance on a long time ago.

“Do you-,” she chewed on her lip, unsure of how to phrase the question. _Still want me?_ “Feel better?” It wasn’t exactly right but he’d understand.

“Yeah,” he said. _Of course, always._

They stood shoulder to shoulder, a united front, scanning the corridor for an attack that never came. Whatever had captured them didn’t seem to be concerned that they’d escaped and she was having a hard time deciding if that was good or bad. Overconfident or stupid--it was always hard to tell.

They’d certainly had their share of both.

The only company they had was their distorted reflections looking back at them from the slick metal that coated the walls, the floors, and the too distant ceilings. It was like being inside a ship made of poor-quality fun-house mirrors.

She took another look at the door they'd just stepped through. The door that seemed perfectly ordinary but shouldn’t have. "That's odd," she said, mostly to herself.

 _Concern._ She felt the concern but it wasn’t hers.

“What?” he asked.

"The door." She shook her head; no, that wasn't right. It was more than the door. "The whole room. It’s-” It’s what? _Impatience._ “It’s out of scale with the rest of the ship." Because the ceiling was too far away, the corridor too wide, like they’d been built for something a lot larger than a couple of misplaced Earthlings.

She suddenly felt naked without her weapons.

Colonel O'Neill tipped his head back and waved at his rippling reflection, trying to distract her. _Hey, look, Carter. Just another routine mission, nothing to worry about._ But his jaw was tense and he was doing that thing with his hand that meant he was nervous. "I see what you mean," he said, still looking up.

The wide hall stretched out in front of them, inviting them to explore. Doors marched down its length, perfect little soldiers in formation on one side, erratic guerrilla fighters on the other. The asymmetric layout made her nervous. She’s always preferred balance.

They moved down the hall together, slowly and with no more conversation, falling back into routines honed to perfection over the years. Not looking for anything in particular, they stuck to the empty hall, ignoring the closed doors on either side.

Step lightly, keep an eye out for movement, listen to Colonel O’Neill’s breathing, be ready to run. Lather, rinse and repeat. It was a familiar pattern, requiring little thought and her mind took advantage of the time off to relax and catch its breath.

The memory was sharp, brittle around the edges and she froze mid-step.

_They’re standing at the bottom of the ramp, waiting for the final chevrons to engage. It’s just the two of them. Colonel O’Neill is joking only it isn’t funny and they both know it. “Daniel probably just got them lost, Carter. You know how he is.”_

_She plays along because that’s what he expects her to do._ Yes, sir. No, sir. Whatever you say, sir. _It’s always the same and sometimes she hates it. “Sure, sir. That’s probably it.” Except Teal’c doesn’t get lost and he doesn’t let Daniel make important decisions and they were supposed to check in hours ago. It was always the easy missions that went to shit._

How could she have forgotten that?

Colonel O’Neill stopped when she stopped, also a familiar routine. They’d always been in sync like that. Even in the beginning, when field duty was still new and exciting. When things like muddy hair and sore muscles were the icing on the cake of interplanetary travel and alien technology. Such a change from the cold labs and stuffy offices where she’d spent the early years of her career.

Even her combat experience had been clean, impersonal. Killing the enemy from the air and going back to her own bunk at the end of each mission. She’d managed to keep the mirror shine on her boots throughout her entire deployment. The SGC had provided her with her first taste of war on an up-close and personal level.

"Sir." She frowned at the word. "We were looking for Daniel and Teal'c. Before-," she didn't finish the sentence because neither of them were ready to talk about the after. She wondered if they ever would be.

He gave her the look he usually reserved for Daniel when he started rambling about the cultural significance of anything and everything. She’d been on the receiving end of the same look once or twice during their early missions, but over the years, his listening-to-Carter-explain-science look had turned into something completely different. Something he never showed to Daniel.

She stuffed that thought behind the curtain, relieved that she could, and his expression shifted, almost to the one she’d been thinking of. There was a touch too much confusion in his eyes but it still made her ears feel warm and why was he looking at her like that?

He blinked and shook the look off of his face. "I can't remember," he said. But he was trying and again she could feel his frustration. If she hadn’t been so concerned about Daniel and Teal’c, that fact might have alarmed her. It stuck in her mind where it would stay until she had time to work out the puzzle.

She tried the radio, speaking softly and holding it close to her ear. There was no response.

_We can not take your call at this time, please try again later._

It wasn’t enough to make her doubt that Teal’c and Daniel were on the ship but it did make her wonder what kind of shape they were in. Were they together? Had they forgotten who they were, where they belonged?

There was only one way to find out.

“We have to go back and check the other rooms.”

 

*******

 

The first one they tried was a large, complicated room on the guerrilla-fighter side of the ship. It made her feel like a nervous rat in a maze. One with no tasty cheese reward. Without the light from the conduit, the room was completely dark once the door closed and they had to search with flashlights.

The room was nothing like the one they started in. Even the walls were different, textured and colorful, and as far as she could tell, non-disappearing. The only thing it had in common with the first room was the conduit, but this one was broken. All the dangerous light was gone, escaped through a jagged hole in the side. Colonel O’Neill kicked at a piece of broken glass and it skittered across the floor with an unpleasant, crunchy sound that reminded her of insects.

“Something wasn’t happy in here,” he said.

The broken glass and the ragged claw marks on the walls were the only indication the room had ever been occupied. Sam got the sense that if there had been any furniture, it would have been broken too. Tossed about the room in a fit of rage.

“I guess not,” she said. And where was that something now?

They left the rat-maze room and Colonel O’Neill went to the evenly spaced doors on the other side. She looked down the hall, trying to get a sense of the size of the ship. Was there only this level or were there hundreds just like it, stacked like Legos. Little plastic bricks of uncertainty.

By the time she brought her attention back to Colonel O’Neill, he was standing in an open doorway, looking a little too confused.

“Shit.” She grabbed the back of his vest and pulled him away from the door, wondering if that was exactly what hadn’t happened the first time they’d opened a door on this ship. They’d probably walked right into the room. Just two little frogs in a pot of water, waiting for it to boil. He lost his balance, and they both landed hard against the far wall.

“Jesus, Carter,” he said. “Take it easy. I’m old.”

“Sorry, sir.” It was an unconvincing apology.

“Yes, well. I’m sure it was for the best.” He made a show of straightening his vest and flattening his hair. “Did you see anything?” he asked, even though he’d been the one staring into the room. What had he seen in there? How would the ship have trapped him if she hadn’t been along for the ride?

“No,” she said. The room was an exact copy of the one they’d started in, round and open, there was nowhere to hide. If Daniel or Teal’c were in there, she would have noticed.

They went through two more small rooms before trying another large one. She could tell right away the conduit was working, felt its pull low in her stomach, its voice whispering in her ear. Their exposure was brief, the door only open long enough for them to see the light, but it was enough to make her uncomfortable.

They took a moment to regroup behind the safety of the tightly sealed door.

Sam realized the problem immediately but Colonel O’Neill was the one to say it out loud. “We can’t go in there together,” he said. The sheen of sweat on his forehead was back even though the hall was cool. He leaned his back against the far wall, playing with his radio and staring at the floor with an unreadable expression.

“We’ll have to take turns,” she said because it was the obvious solution. And then, for reasons she didn’t entirely understand, “I’ll go first.”

She didn’t normally volunteer to be the first one into an unknown situation because that was a risk he liked to reserve for himself. It was something she resented the first few times it came up, suspicious that he didn’t trust her because she was a woman, or a scientist, or both.

When she ranted about it to Daniel after too many beers one night, he’d simply pointed out that Jack did the same thing to Teal’c who was quite clearly not female and also not a scientist. After she learned about his dead son, she thought maybe Colonel O’Neill still had a bit of a dark, suicidal streak in him.

She never mentioned that to Daniel.

 

*********

 

Sam was careful not to look directly at the conduit and that bought her some time, but not much. It was tucked in a corner, casting its light out into the room. Its cheerful glow wasn’t bright enough to fill the whole space and the high walls left areas of deep shadow that needed to be investigated.

She walked around the wall running through the middle of the room. The space on the other side was shadowed and gloomy like something out of a Scooby Doo episode. Her flashlight revealed nothing but emptiness. No scary monsters in sight. She was going to call back and tell Colonel O’Neill that the room was empty but the voice stopped her.

“Samantha.”

It’s been a long time, but she recognized it immediately. Remembered the way it sounded singing her to sleep, or reading A Wrinkle in Time over and over. When the owner of the voice stepped out of the shadows, she was more beautiful than Sam remembered. They’re almost the same age and that wasn’t right but those details seemed less important with each passing second.

Sam only doubted what she was seeing for a moment. The ship worked quickly, creating explanations and adding memories, filling in the gaps. Such small details that would have led to a different outcome. _A different cab, an earlier flight._ Later, Sam would get to replay those moments and work at separating them from the events that had actually happened.

“Mom?”

Her mother smiled at her, so real, so happy to see her. Sam knew her mother had been gone for more years than not but it still felt as though only a heartbeat had passed since they were together. There was so much Sam wanted to tell her. She’s seen and done so much that her mother would be proud of.

She took the first step toward the welcoming circle of her mother’s arms but never made it.

Something was dragging her backwards, away from her mother and it wasn’t fair. The image of her mother flickered for a moment and when it faded completely, it was like the day she died all over again.

“Let me go.” Her cheeks were wet and she hated to cry. It pissed her off and she pulled free of his grip, upsetting his balance in the process. She tried to go back to where her mother was standing but it was too late. She was gone. Again.

It was just as painful as the first time.

She wanted to sit on the floor and wait for her mother to come back, but Colonel O’Neill wouldn’t let her. He grabbed her around the waist and picked her up, half dragging, half carrying her back to the hall. He didn’t let her go until the door was long shut.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” was all he said. That’s when she knew things had gone too far. He never called her Sam anymore. Sam was for bad situations, a word she didn’t entirely trust from him. It was an apology all by itself.

She slid down to the floor and pulled her knees close enough to rest her forehead on them. Colonel O’Neill sat beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close. “I really believed it was her,” she said.

He didn’t say anything and she let him hold her for awhile because why the fuck not.

 

*****

 

When the door opened on the first room that wasn’t empty, Sam was sure it was Teal’c inside, lying on the floor in a broken heap. Colonel O’Neill put his hand on her arm, gently turning her. “It’s not Teal’c,” he said. “It’s- Well, I don’t know what the hell that thing is but it’s definitely not Teal’c.”

He was right, and she would have come to that conclusion soon enough even if he hadn’t said anything. It didn’t occur to her until long after they’d actually found Teal’c to wonder why he’d said it at all.

They went in together because the conduit was broken and they could. The body on the floor was large; Sam figured it would have easily been twelve feet tall if it were standing. She pulled a flashlight out of her vest to get a better look. Her light was absorbed and reflected unevenly over the iridescent surface of its scaly bulk. Rainbows shimmered along its surface like oil on water.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said. Sometimes she thought about how much they’d seen and done, about all the planets they’d visited, the alien races they’d met. It seemed surreal. And still, here was this thing they’d never encountered and it was beautiful.

It reminded her just how big the universe really was.

 

*****

 

They moved on to the next large room and both stepped away from the door as soon as they saw the orange glow inside. Sam stood back, waiting for Colonel O’Neill to go in because it was his turn and she’d had enough loss for one day.  

He seemed frozen, contemplative and hesitant. That got Sam’s attention because none of those things were in his playbook. She watched him standing just out of range of the sensors and breathing like it was a lot of work to keep the air moving in and out of his chest. She felt like she’d forgotten something important. Some critical piece of information hidden just out of reach, overshadowed by the fleeting image of her mother.

“Carter,” he finally said. “I can’t go in there.” He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead.

She wanted to tell him not to worry, that she had his back and wouldn’t let him get lost in there, but the look in his eyes stopped her. The overwhelming sense of loss and despair made her blink back tears.

_Charlie._

Of course. How long had he been thinking about that, dreading it? There was no way she could let him go in there. Sam’s mother popped back into her mind for an encore performance, looking disappointed and lonely, reminding her that she didn’t want to go in the room either.

Still, they can’t go in together because the last time-

_“Carter, what the hell just happened?”_

_She reaches down for her weapon but it’s not there. She knows they’re on a ship but she doesn’t recognize the design. “I think we’ve been kidnapped,” she quips. It’s not the first time and she’s not overly concerned._

_There are doors all along the hall and before she can stop him, Colonel O’Neill walks up to one. It opens in front of him and she follows him into the room._

_“Huh,” he says. “This is... different.”_

_And, yeah, it’s just a round room with a tube of light. By the time she notices the fuzziness creeping into her brain, it’s too late. When she turns to say something to him, he’s looking at her--really looking at her. He isn’t supposed to be looking at her like that, with that open, slightly panicked expression. The one that says he’s let go of that final thread of self-control._

_Neither of them notice when the door slides shut._

There was only one safe option.

She took his hand, distracting him from his memories, wondering if some part of him wanted to go in and see his son again even if he knew it wasn’t real.  He followed easily when she led him away from the door. “Let’s stick to the small rooms,” she said.

It was a gamble, but one she was willing to take.

 

******

 

It took three more tries to find something close enough to a familiar form to see what went wrong.

Sam got down on the floor, taking a closer look at the contorted shape. Its skin was taut and thin, stretched over bones that were almost human. A single wide eye set deep in the skull stared back at her. “It looks like it starved to death,” she said.

A sense of understanding that didn’t belong to her flashed in her mind. A small blip on a single frame of the film running through her head. _Coca Cola! Always refreshing! I’ve seen this before! A butterfly net._ She frowned at the body on the floor, wondering if it was truly as dead as it looked. Was it somehow projecting these things at her?

She jumped a little when Colonel O’Neill spoke in a voice that was too loud for the situation. “Carter,” he declared. “I know what this is.” He gestured at the room and beyond. “This ship.”

She waited for his explanation, sure that he had one and genuinely curious about what it would be. So far, neither the ship or the situation had made much sense to her. There was no order to it. No pattern. She hadn’t found a single thread to tie it all together.

“Did you ever collect bugs when you were a kid?” he asked.

 

********

 

They found Daniel first.

They could see him from the door, sitting on the floor with his shoulder resting on the glass. The warm light rippled across his face like sunshine over water and Sam almost forgot they were there to rescue him.

Colonel O’Neill took the first step but she stopped him with a hand on his arm. Had he forgotten already that she wasn’t going to let him go in? Didn’t he know she was afraid he wouldn’t come out?

“I’ll go,” she said.

She didn’t wait for an argument and tried not to think too hard about the powerful, unfamiliar urge to protect him that had been building in her mind.

The effects of the light were muted and easy to ignore as she crossed the small room. It was almost pleasant, the warm, easy feeling she got after two glasses of wine. She waved at Colonel O’Neill to let him know she was okay. He was standing close to the door, keeping it open so she couldn’t disappear. He waved back, and she could see the tension slide off his face. Her shoulders relaxed, releasing a tightness she hadn’t noticed until it was gone.

When she sat next to Daniel, he glanced in her direction, aware of her presence but not seeing her. She waited, watching a parade of expressions dance across his face. None of them were for her and when he spoke, the words were meant for someone else.

A few of the Abydonian words were familiar. She listened to his one-sided conversation longer than she needed to. It was a pretty language. Pretty and meaningless; she didn’t understand any of it. Sam had a great mind for numbers and puzzles but she’s always been crap at languages.

She reached for his shoulder and shook it gently. "Daniel?" He turned and looked at her through clear blue eyes that were supposed to be swimming behind glasses. Eyes that were still seeing the bright sand and pyramids of Abydos.

"Sha're?"  

Sam winced and Colonel O’Neill stopped pacing the hall to look in at them. She could feel the weight of his attention in her chest.

She shook Daniel again. "Daniel, it's Sam."

As convincing as the illusions could be, they were tenuous. Daniel’s eyes became less distant as he focused on his unfamiliar surroundings. The look of contentment on his face was quickly replaced with one of confusion.

"I was on Abydos, with Sha’re." He said it quietly-maybe he was talking to himself-and there was such heartbreaking disappointment in his voice, she wished she had left him there a little longer.

It wasn’t fair that he had to lose her a third time.

 

*****

 

The next six rooms they checked were empty and Sam started to worry that Teal’c had been killed or left behind because of his symbiote. She caught Colonel O’Neill looking at her with a tight, strained look and she knew he was thinking the same thing.

Later, she’ll wonder which of them had the thought first.

When they finally opened the right door, they found Teal’c sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room, staring directly at the fierce, orange glow of the conduit. Challenging it and losing.

They sent Daniel in to get him and didn’t have to wait long before he led Teal’c into the hall, both of them looking like survivors of a cataclysmic event that had robbed them of their loved ones. In a way, she supposed, that was exactly what they were.

Teal’c gave the hall a cursory glance, looking a lot less concerned than she’d felt when she’d first stepped out of her cell. It only lasted a moment before his eyebrow went up in alarm. It was as close to panic as she’d ever seen on him.

"Something is wrong," he said.

Sam felt a fleeting urge to laugh at that. Because, yes, something was very wrong.

But Teal’c was right, there was something else. Something missing. There was so much out of place in her mind, she wasn’t sure she would have noticed if he hadn’t said anything.

"Your symbiote is gone." Sam could feel its absence. That small sense of something extra she felt around Teal’c was missing.

Teal'c lifted his shirt and ran a large hand over the smooth stomach underneath. There was no sign that he’d ever carried a symbiote. “How can this be?” he asked.

Her first thought was that maybe the symbiote had been given its own cell but when she looked at Daniel and realized that, despite not having his glasses, he hadn’t walked into any walls, she changed her mind.

Their abductors had been kind enough to fix them up before pinning them to a styrofoam board and sticking them in an old cigar box.

 

******

 

They stuck to the large central branch of the ship, starting from the back where all the holding cells were located and moving forward. Their rippling counterparts slid silently along the wall as they moved. She kept catching the movement in her peripheral vision and it made her jumpy.

They passed smaller corridors at regular intervals, branching out on either side like the outstretched arms of a long lost friend. _Hey, nice to see you! It’s been a long time. Come, walk down these halls, I have a lot to show you..._

They didn’t stray from path they were following, making an unspoken agreement to investigate those paths later. Assuming they lived to see a later. The ship felt empty, like a tomb, and Sam had already made up her mind that they were alone, but she was wary of the technology that might be thrown at them.

The central hall emptied into a room with a familiar arrangement of screens and workstations. Neat and orderly and evenly distributed. Just the sight of it made her feel better. They’ve been on a lot of alien ships and they all seem to have some version of this.

“I think we found the bridge,” she said.

Sam looked up to the clear dome high above her head. It made the size of the halls seem reasonable. When Daniel stepped into the center of the room, a viewscreen on the front wall came to life. Symbols that none of them recognized flashed and rotated around a central image that they were all familiar with.

“Are we-” Colonel O’Neill pointed to the screen.

Any hope of an easy trip home vanished at the sight. There’s no way of knowing how long they’ve been in hyperspace but it’s clear that their stargate home is long gone.

“I guess that rules out Plan B.”

Nobody bothered to ask about Plan A; they knew better.

 

*****

 

There were no chairs on the bridge.

Despite the large scale of the ship, the workstations were all at a comfortable standing height for humans. Sam imagined the owners of the ship with large, delicate spires sprouting from the top of their heads as she went around examining each station. There were no buttons or switches, just a smooth glass panel that remained dark despite her groping and tapping. If they could gain access to the ship’s systems, there was a chance they could fly it home. A small chance, perhaps, but it was all they had.

She could feel Colonel O’Neill’s eyes following her around the room while she listened to Daniel try and piece together the chain of events of their last mission. She made her way back to them, leaving the unresponsive screens for later.

“I remember leaving the SGC with Teal’c,” Daniel was saying. “We were headed for a village. It was supposed to be empty.”

Teal’c nodded in agreement. His hand kept drifting to the front of his shirt. “I do not recall reaching the village,” he said.

“No,” said Daniel. “Neither do I.”

“We didn’t hear from you two after the initial radio contact,” Sam added. “We sent a UAV.” She had only just remembered that part. It hadn’t done much good. Was the UAV still there? Had it recorded their abduction?

“I thought you got lost.”  Colonel O’Neill tapped the face of his watch and held it up to his ear. “Huh,” he said. “My watch stopped.”

Daniel looked at his own watch and poked it once for good measure. “Mine too,” he said. He stared at his watch a moment longer. “I wonder how long we’ve been here?”

Daniel kept talking but Sam was thinking about the way Colonel O’Neill’s face had felt like it had been too long since it had seen a razor. How her thumb had dragged over his his rough cheek. Had he left marks on the sensitive skin of her breasts, the inside of her thighs? A little reminder for her to find later.

Daniel interrupted her thoughts. “Sam?” he said, like he’d said it more than once.

“I’m sorry, Daniel. What were you saying?”

She glanced at Colonel O’Neill. He was leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets and an apology on his face like he’d known exactly what she’d been thinking about.

“Did you find Jack or did he find you?”

"Neither,” she told him. “We were in the same room.” Why that was, she hadn’t figured out but it was probably the reason they were able to break free from the keep-the-bugs-happy technology.

It seemed like a lucky break at the time.

 

******

 

Even after sharing all their pieces, the puzzle was full of holes and missing edges. They’d been transported to the ship, that much was clear. Why and by whom they could only guess.

They needed more information and there was only one way to get it. “We need to go back and do a more thorough search of the ship,” she said. One of those unexplored corridors might be holding the secret to their ticket home.

Colonel O’Neill nodded in agreement. “We’ll pair up,” he paused, looking at each of them. “ I’ll take Daniel.” It wasn’t what he wanted to say but she was relieved. Sam was grateful for the chance to put some distance between herself and Colonel O’Neill. She walked off the bridge thinking that while she might be a little bit in love with Colonel O’Neill, and she’s always had the most in common with Daniel, Teal’c still managed to be her favorite.

“And, Carter?” Colonel O’Neill called out as they left.

“Sir?”

“Stay the hell away from those containment cells.”

 

********

 

Teal’c and Sam covered the corridors on the left side of the ship.

Most of the doors refused to open for them. She tried every trick she could think of but they remained stubbornly closed. They had even tried prying one open because it always worked in the movies but the metal was too smooth and there was nothing to grip.

She smacked the door that was currently ignoring her. “What sense does it make to lock so many doors when the bridge is wide open.”

Tea’c tipped his head and lifted a questioning eyebrow in her direction. _Major Carter_ , it said, _I do believe you are overreacting._ Teal’c let the eyebrow speak for itself and chose some more diplomatic words to say aloud. “Accessing the bridge did not seem to provide us any advantage,” he said.

That was true, but the thought of what lived behind the closed doors continued to nag at her.

Like the bridge, the next room they gain access to is one that Sam would have kept locked.

The room was vast and underfurnished. There are only three ships, sitting close together and looking like the last lonely egg in the carton. Rectangular forcefields skirted the edges, waiting to open and usher them to freedom.

“I think these are escape pods,” she said. It was an understatement. They were ships really, large enough for the four of them and more advanced than anything they’d ever escaped in.

She stopped examining the ships and rubbed her temples. Her eyes felt dry and her head was starting to hurt like some large set of hands was slowly crushing it.

“Are you feeling unwell?” asked Teal’c. He put a hand on her shoulder and she leaned into it, grateful for the contact.

“I’m fine, Teal’c. I think I’m just getting a headache.”

He didn’t believe her, but that was okay because it wasn’t true.

 

********

 

The last room that opened for them was the cafeteria.

It was lined with smoked glass panels and nothing else. Sam thought the panels were decorative until she walked too close to one and it scanned her. The unpleasant tingling wasn’t new to her and she cursed under her breath. Teal’c ran to her side but she waved him off. No sense in both of them getting zapped. Who knew what it would do to them?

A moment passed, then another. She didn’t melt or disintegrate or any number of other horrible things she’d been considering. The glass just lit up and a small tray materialized. There were unpleasantly colored wafers sitting on the tray alongside a cup of clear liquid.

“What do you think, Teal’c?” She picked up the cup and sniffed at it. It was odorless. She wasn’t naive enough to think that meant it wasn’t dangerous so she stuck a finger in it. Nothing happened. “Does this look like a Happy Meal to you?”

 

********

 

Her head was pounding by the time they got back to the empty bridge.

Sam felt more relief than she should have when Colonel O’Neill and Daniel showed up, like it wasn’t all hers, and another piece of the puzzle slid into place. It was a good piece too. All the interruptions in her head, the new, confusing feelings, started to make more sense.

Well, fuck. Didn’t they have enough to deal with?

“Look what we found,” Colonel O’Neill announced as he entered, P90 in one hand and Tea’c’s staff weapon in the other. His words were light, easy and relaxed, and the exact opposite of the expression on his face.

Daniel followed close behind, dragging their rucksacks and muttering something under his breath. Probably something about having to carry all their gear by himself. Sam grabbed hers from the pile Daniel had made and sat on the floor with it.

Weapons were always good, but at the moment, Sam was more interested in the bottle of Excedrin she kept stashed in her rucksack. Just the thought made her head feel better. Her headache settled into a dull ache while she was digging through her pack. It continued to fade while she washed the pills down with lukewarm canteen water.

“We found the crew quarters too,” said Daniel. “Wait till you see them.” Sam was sure he thought that was more interesting than finding their weapons.

“They have bathrooms,” Colonel O’Neill added. “I guess everything has to pee eventually.”

There was a brief moment of silence to thank the greater powers in the Universe that they wouldn’t need to improvise on that front. They’d done it before and it hadn’t been pretty.

“Major Carter and I found escape pods,” Teal’c said.

Daniel and Colonel O’Neill looked hopeful but only because they didn’t know that the small ships had ignored her just as soundly as the equipment on the bridge. “Can we escape in them?” asked Daniel.

“Perhaps,” Teal’c told him. “Many of them were missing.”

They were all quiet for a minute, each wondering what had driven the ship’s occupants to abandon it. “I’ll see what I can do with them,” said Sam. She was already convinced that there was nothing she could do, that they would remain dark and useless, but it seemed cruel to let them know that so soon.

 

*******

 

She waited until they ran out of things to share before approaching him.

He was staring at the main screen, watching their chances of getting home pass by in a shimmering blur. She stood next to him, wondering when she had become so pessimistic. Had it been all at once or a slow transition? She couldn’t remember.

“Sir,” she said. “Can I talk to you?”

It was an odd request, she knew that and so did he. Still, he answered like it was a perfectly normal thing for them to do. “Sure, Carter,” he said. “What’s up?”

Daniel and Teal’c were still going through their rucksacks and probably wouldn’t pay much attention to them but she wanted to make sure they had some privacy. “Outside?” she asked.

“Yeah, okay.” He nodded and followed her toward the hall, stopping to talk to Teal’c and Daniel on the way. “Hey, Carter and I are going to go...for a walk.”

There was no door on the bridge so they walked down the main hall until they were well out of earshot. Sam paced around until he started to get fidgety. His impatience grated on her nerves, making it harder to jump into the conversation they needed to have.

“Sir,” she finally said. “This may sound weird but I think I can feel-,” _what, exactly?_ “I think I can feel...whatever you’re feeling.”

He wasn’t surprised and she thought she caught a whiff of guilt. She should have guessed it was a two-way street. “I was hoping it was just me,” he said.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” It wasn’t like he’d ever been open about what went on in his head but she felt obligated to ask.

He just shrugged and kept talking like she should have known better than to ask. “Well,” he said, “I guess it’s not the biggest problem we have right now.”

“No, I guess not.” He was right, they still had a reluctant ship to conquer. It was a little weird, especially now that she knew it was affecting him too but it was something they could deal with. Something that wasn’t going to kill them, anyway. She hoped.

“Maybe it’ll wear off,” he said.

“Sure,” she said, and at the time, she believed it. If not while they were on the ship, surely it would wear off when(if) they ever got home.

It doesn’t wear off, and it might not be their biggest problem yet, but it will be.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final part of this story. I'm sorry it took this long. It was my intention to post the second half a lot sooner.

*******  
Part 2  
*******

There's still a little bit of your ghost, your witness  
Still a little bit of your face I haven't kissed  
You step a little closer each day  
That I can’t say what's going on

 

For a while, they had nothing tangible to mark the passage of time. None of their watches had survived the trip, and there was no sunrise to mark the days. The lights on the ship were a steady constant, wearing on Sam’s soul and making her feel thin around the edges.

They stayed awake that first day until her eyes burned. She spent most of the time bouncing theories around with Daniel like it would make a difference. Colonel O’Neill sat with Teal’c, both of them unusually quiet. Sam wondered if they’d slept at all in the cell. None of the memories she flipped through included sleeping.

Daniel passed out first, sprawled in the middle of the bridge like a discarded piece of clothing. They set up their sleeping bags around him in a tent-sized space out of habit.

Sam woke with a stiff back and an ache in her thighs and told herself it was from sleeping on the floor. Colonel O’Neill’s decaying sleep orbit had left him by her side, pulled in by her gravity. He pretended to be asleep while she crawled out of her sleeping bag like she’d been caught doing something wrong.

On the second morning, the ship dropped out of hyperdrive for the first time. Sam was too caught up in the idea that it somehow meant they would be able to get home to notice that his empty sleeping bag was parked a safer distance from hers.

Colonel O’Neill and Teal’c were standing at the front of the bridge, staring at the viewscreen the same way she stared at her microwave--impatient and hungry. The viewscreen stared back, a great big rectangle of nothing. Sam worked hard to hold on to her optimism under its weight.

When Colonel O’Neill turned to look at her, the questions on his face were so clear he didn’t need to say anything. What does this mean? Is it useful? Can you pull a miracle out of your ass? She used to like when he looked at her like that, like she was important. Now it felt like an anchor, and she was having a hard time treading water.

She answered all of his unasked questions at once, and he managed to keep his disappointment between the two of them. “I don’t know, sir.”

Sam made her way to the nearest workstation. The edge of the smooth surface was lit with a faint blue glow that hadn’t been there before. She touched it, and the light deepened to a dark purple. It was pretty but useless. The ship jumped back into hyperspace a moment later, and the color slipped away.

Daniel slept through the whole thing.

 

*******

On the fifth morning, Colonel O’Neill was pressed up against her back like he belonged there.

That was the day she packed up her things and moved into one of the empty crew rooms.

She picked a room close to the bridge, because there was still a bit of optimism sloshing around the bottom of her bucket. The matte grey walls felt like a like a reprieve after the mirrored surfaces in the corridor. The door closed behind her, the lights dimmed, and Sam sat on the long, low bed soaking up the darkness.

Daniel and Teal’c followed her like falling dominoes. Teal’c moved in next to her, and Daniel took the room across the hall. Colonel O’Neill spent another night alone on the bridge before moving into a room at the far end of the corridor. It was too far and not far enough.

“Sometimes I snore,” he told Daniel.

When Sam woke up the next morning with a headache and the tattered remnants of a nightmare she couldn’t remember, she dismissed it as a symptom of getting used to her new accommodations. She ate a breakfast of MRE crackers and Excedrin, and spent the day avoiding everybody.

 

*******

 

It’s bright and hot on the dusty planet. Sam turns away from the gate, and Jack is standing by the DHD, smiling at her in a way that makes her insides feel warm and heavy. She’s about to smile back when a staff blast rips his chest open.

She doesn’t have time to react before the scene changes and they’re on his deck, grilling burgers and soaking up late afternoon sunshine. Teal’c and Daniel are there too, tossing a football around like a couple of high school jocks. She knows it’s a dream, but that doesn’t stop her from screaming when a gunshot echoes in her ears and Jack falls to the ground.

 

*****

 

Their schedules drifted apart once they stopped sleeping in the same space, and Sam found herself awake with Teal’c as her only company for hours at a time. Daniel tended to be a binge sleeper, grabbing a nap whenever the mood struck, but she suspected Colonel O’Neill was doing it on purpose.

She didn’t mind. Teal’c was good company.

They still made an effort to gather in the cafeteria at least once a day--and it was an effort. It was amazing, really, how fast their small group fractured in isolation. They were all loners in their own way.

Colonel O’Neill scraped the sides of his Tuna With Noodles pouch with a spoon. It was a sorry excuse for a last meal. “Well, that’s it,” he announced. “No more MREs.” They were lucky the MREs lasted as long as they had. Teal’c and Daniel had left the SGC well-stocked.

Sam felt Colonel O’Neill’s disappointment like it was her own. She frowned at her empty food pouch. Maybe it was her own disappointment after all. She still had a pack of crackers and grape jelly in her room. Something to look forward to, but not enough to live on. They were going to have to start eating the alien kibble.

“I never thought I’d miss MREs,” she said.

Jack smiled at her for the first time in days, warm and genuine. She thought about the way he’d felt underneath her. The way his hands had felt on her bare skin. His smile faltered and Sam felt the first delicate tendrils of the anger that would grow between them settle around her shoulders.

She stuffed her trash into one bag and tossed it toward the wall. It landed close enough to be scanned by a pellet dispenser. The machine flashed yellow, unsure of the nutritional needs of MRE wrappers.

“It’s too bad we can’t get those things to spit out cheeseburgers,” said Daniel.

 

*******

 

She was sitting with Teal’c in the room where their rucksacks, weapons, and the belongings of countless others had been found. They’d been working their way through the stash, looking for anything that might be important or useful. Or, in Daniel’s case, mildly interesting or shiny.

“Colonel O’Neill seems to be having a difficult time,” Teal’c announced after a long stretch of silence.

Sam concentrated on her hands, watching them go through the motions of normalcy all on their own. “We’ve been having some unusual side-effects,” she admitted.

“I am not.”

“Yeah.” She put down the might-be-a-weapon she’d been tinkering with. “I think it’s because we were in the same cell.” Teal’c nodded like he’d come to the same conclusion. “We seem to be sharing some sort of emotional bond.”

Emotional bond seemed too vague and too much like the thing that had existed between them long before the ship. She corrected herself. “I can feel what he’s feeling. His emotions.”

Teal’c raised one eyebrow like he did when he was listening to the things she wasn’t actually saying. “That must be...uncomfortable.”

She didn’t tell Teal’c about the slow, burning anger that had taken up residence in her head. About the ache in her stomach every time Jack looked at her. “It’s- It’s hard.”

Teal’c was quiet for a while. When he spoke, he picked his words carefully. “Is it really so different?” he asked. “I believe O’Neill’s feelings have been clear for some time.”

Teal’c was right, of course, and she couldn’t even pretend otherwise. He’d been present for all the highlights of the emotional fallout between her and Colonel O’Neill. Knowing about Jack’s feelings, and feeling his feelings were not the same thing at all. It’s like living in an echo chamber. All those years of pretending it was a one way infatuation had left her unprepared to deal with his feelings on top of her own.

It wasn’t something she could make Teal’c understand. She shook her head and turned the conversation away from herself. “How about you, Teal’c? How does it feel to not have your symbiote?”

“It is strange.”

It occurred to Sam that Teal’c had lost a parasite, and in a way, she’d gained one.

 

******

Her stomach was growling. It sounded loud in the silent escape pod, like it had been days instead of hours since she’d eaten. She pulled her knees to her chest and wondered if anyone was looking for her. Between the locked doors and the off-limit cells, there weren’t that many good hiding places on the ship.

She drifted in and out of sleep until she heard the sound of Colonel O’Neill’s boots outside the door. He was walking loudly on purpose, and it felt like a warning. Not that she had any way to escape, which was sadly ironic considering she was sitting in an escape pod.

He stepped onto the ship, probably expecting to find her doing something more interesting than sitting on the floor with her back against the bulkhead. A brief flash of confusion passed over his face and through her mind.

“Hey, Carter. Working hard?”

He was tense and she wasn’t sure why he was trying to hide it. Especially from her. The disconnect between his emotions and his words made her skin crawl. “Yeah. I worked so hard I needed a break.”

“Right.” His knuckles tapped a solemn beat on the wall. “I just wanted to-”

Sam waited for him to figure out what it was he just wanted to do, even though she knew he was going to keep it to himself. He’d probably already said more than he’d wanted.

“I just wanted to see if you were making any progress with this thing,” he finished.

It wasn’t even a good lie. Jack’s interest in the ship was binary; it worked, or it didn’t. Everything in between was unimportant. It was amazing how they couldn’t manage an honest conversation even now. She thought they used to be better at talking, but conversations had become dangerous territory. They were so out of practice now, they might never recover.

“No,” she said. “I’m not making much progress with anything these days.”

She could feel his emotional hackles go up. He stared down at her, his hopeful look sliding into anger. She wondered what put the hopeful thoughts in his head to begin with. He should have known better. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“It’s not supposed to mean anything.” Like always. Nothing between the two of them ever meant anything. Just more meaningless bullshit to bury.

She looked at him, standing there like he wanted to bolt, but unsure which direction to go--toward her or away. She wanted both. Sometimes she wanted to be back in that cell. Just the two of them with the light and the heat.

He took a step closer and she chased him away, because she wanted to pin him against the wall. To run her hands up his back. “Can you just go?”

His knuckles hit the wall one more time before he left.

She didn’t try to stop him.

 

*******

 

Sam started the tenth day with the bright flash of an exploding cargo ship in her head and the taste of bile in her throat. She sat up and leaned against the wall. Pretending to sleep was starting to feel like a waste of time. She pulled on her pants and stepped into the hall, letting the bright lights wash over her.

The ship was the same, holding its secrets tight. She walked the halls, stopping to press an ear against the doors that wouldn’t open. Most of them were quiet, so when she found one that resonated with the high-pitched whine of an angry hornet’s nest, she was convinced it was the sound of something important. Maybe the thing that was powering their fucked-up journey through space. Maybe if she could get to it, she could shut it down. She didn’t have the energy to think beyond that.

There was an access panel on the wall, well-hidden in the rippling surface. She used her knife to pry the cover off. The joints were tight and it cost her the tip of her blade. She cursed quietly to herself. One day she’d learn to pack a screwdriver.

The technology inside was like nothing she’d ever seen, full of glowing liquids that gave it an organic quality, like the ship might be alive on some level. None of it made any sense, and Sam was reminded of the early days when crystal technology had seemed like magic.

One of the tubes started to glow a warm amber color while she poked around with her Gerber. She yawned, rubbed her eyes, and thought she might be making progress.

The energy pulse was bright blue and fast, but not so fast that she shouldn’t have been able to avoid it. She watched it racing toward her hand, too tired to understand what it meant.

 

******

 

Someone was yelling at her, but she couldn’t make out the words. The voice was muffled and slow, coming to her through a pool of dark water. When she opened her eyes, Colonel O’Neill was holding her head. Blood was trickling down her temple like sweat, and the way he was looking at her--she tried to focus on his shoulder.

He ran an anxious hand through his hair. “Are you trying to get yourself killed, Carter?” His voice was quiet, but the words felt loud and demanding.

She took a moment to work out what it was she had been trying to do. She was pretty sure getting herself killed wasn’t it.

“I’m trying to get us home,” she said. She balled her shaking hands at her side. “It’s kind of what I do, in case you forgot.” Talking was a bad idea. She put her hand on her head. Jack’s eyes narrowed and he went from pissed, to terrified, and back again in the time it took her to take a full breath.

“Well, stop.” He paced around the hall, dragging his emotions behind him. They were mixed and loud. “I can’t babysit you all the time,” he snapped.

Sam felt like she was having a conversation with a stranger. His anger wasn’t unexpected. It had been filling his mind for days, but asking her to stop trying to find a way home was too much. She’d been his miracle worker for too many years.

“Yes, sir.” Her words felt sharp and strange. She imagined them sticking in his flesh like broken glass.

“That’s right,” he said. “Don’t fucking forget it.”

And he could stuff those wings up his ass for all she cared. “Oh, fuck you.” She’d really had enough of this shit. “Sir.”

She was surprised when he turned and walked off. Maybe he’d had enough of her shit too. It was probably for the best. There was just nowhere good for that conversation to go. She leaned back and stared at the inside of her eyelids until Daniel and Teal’c showed up.

Daniel was out of breath and wearing his concern on his face. Teal’c offered her a hand and she let him pull her to her feet. She was still a little light-headed, but it didn’t feel like anything that was going to kill her.

Daniel moved her hair to the side and looked at the cut on her head. “What’s going on, Sam?” It was clear that he was talking about more than the blood on her head. She wiped at it with her sleeve.

“Nothing, Daniel.”

“Nothing? Really? That’s what you’re going with?” Daniel looked to Teal’c for support, but Teal’c had nothing to add. He kept pushing, because that’s what Daniel did. “Jack looks like he wants to kill us all.” Daniel put his hands on her shoulders and waited for her to look at him. “Please, Sam.”

“I-” She tapped her head, suddenly angry at Daniel and his gentle prodding. “All of his feelings are in my damn head, Daniel. Ever since we were in that room together.”

It took Daniel a moment to process what she was saying. To realize she was being literal. His wide eyes gave her a better view of the disappointment. “You didn’t think this was important enough to share?”

She added Daniel’s hurt feelings to the pile of emotional garbage she didn’t want to deal with. It was a shitty thought. He was her friend, and he just wanted to help. “No. I didn’t.”

“Sam, did something happen while you two were in there?” The something in that question only had one meaning. Daniel was well aware of the line she and Jack had been trying not to trip over for so long.

Teal’c looked away and Sam realized he’d known all along. Sometimes she forgot how perceptive he was. Unlike Daniel, he kept his revelations to himself.

She answered Daniel’s question with silence and walked back to her room. They followed her through the halls, and she left them standing outside her door. She wasn’t there long before she heard voices in the hall. She couldn’t make out the words, but Jack’s emotions were bright and clear.

Her door opened and Daniel slipped in. “Hey,” he said. “Jack suggested that we keep an eye on you for a while.” His expression was unusually guarded. Sam had no doubt that there had been more to the discussion, because Daniel didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. “So, here I am,” said Daniel.

“I’m fine, Daniel. I don’t need this.”

“Yeah, I know.” He sat beside her and put an arm over her shoulder. She leaned into him, letting his solid warmth ground her. “I know, Sam.” He kept talking, and she fell asleep to the sound of his animated chattering about various things he’d discovered in the storage room.

She wasn’t sure what woke her, but when she opened her eyes, Daniel was sitting at her feet, staring at her like something was wrong. She sat up too quickly, and her ears started to ring. "What? What happened?"

"I don't know,” said Daniel. “You started calling out for Jack."

Shit. "Colonel O'Neill?"

"No. Jack."

"That's-” What it was, was completely understandable, because she’d been calling out to him in her dream too. She didn’t want to tell Daniel that. “Weird," she said instead.

"Bad dreams?"

"I don’t remember.” The lie came easily. It wasn’t always like that with Daniel.

Daniel checked his non-functioning watch like he expected it to start working at some point. "It's time for a shift change anyway,” he said. “I’m about to pass out." He squeezed her knee before getting up.

“Daniel?” she called to him before he could leave. “Thanks.”

It was the closest thing to an apology she could manage.

Sam was expecting Teal’c, but Colonel O’Neill showed up instead. He was apprehensive and full of a guilt she didn’t understand. She wasn’t sure where he left all the anger. Maybe in the hall. She imagined it out there, a big puddle of darkness slinking along the shiny floor, trying to squeeze under her door and back into his head.

"Daniel said you requested me?" His voice was soft, the one he used when they were alone even though he shouldn’t. The one that made made her feel slightly unhinged and off balance.

“Yeah,” she said. It was hard to talk around the tightness in her throat. “I guess I did."

He stepped into the room, and made his way to the edge of her bed. She exhaled, slowly and controlled. The mattress was firm and only dipped slightly when he sat down next to her. "Are you okay?" he asked.

She assumed he was talking about more than her head injury, because weren’t they were always talking about more than what they said? Saying things they didn’t mean. Meaning things they didn’t say.

"No,” she said. It was the most honest thing she’d said to him in days. Years, maybe. She watched him pick at the zipper running around her sleeping bag for a while before asking, “Why are you so mad at me?”

His hand stilled, and he looked at her like she’d just kicked him in the stomach. “It’s not you, Carter. Shit.” He stood up and paced around the room wearing a dark look. “I’m not mad at you.” That came as a surprise to Sam, because he sure as hell had been acting like he was mad.

He came back to her side and looked straight at her. It was something he normally avoided, and it made her cheeks feel warm. “I just keep thinking that the ship- That it used what I wanted to keep me in that room.” He waved a hand between them and the dark look turned into something else. Something less dangerous and more broken. “Maybe not what you wanted.”

All the distance and anger and guilt fell into place and into context, but she still didn’t understand why. Her feelings shouldn’t have been a mystery to him. Especially now that she was broadcasting them straight into his head. “You had to have known,” she said. She touched her head to emphasize her point.

He closed his eyes for a moment, relieved but not by much. His guilt had found a way to weave her feelings into his version of events. To convince him that somehow their physical relationship had triggered the emotional one. “But maybe what you’re feeling now is just-- Because of what happened.”

“I wish,” she said quietly. Had she been that convincing? She didn’t think so. Maybe he’d just gotten good at convincing himself it was a one-sided issue. “I thought you knew,” she told him. She’d always felt like her emotions were plastered all over her face where he was concerned.

“I guess I just didn’t know if it was still like that,” he said.

She thought about the rush of emotions that always accompanied his presence and how far back she had to go to remember a time when that wasn’t the case. “It is still like that,” she said. “It’s always been like that.”

“Yeah.” He wanted to say more but didn’t, because what was the point? Pretending that their problems started and ended with this ship might have been the easier option, but they didn’t have that luxury.

He sat with his back against the wall and patted his leg. She took the invitation easily and rested her head in his lap. She closed her eyes tight, holding back tears that kept trying to fall. She’d wanted him for so long, desperately so at times. The familiar ache sat heavy in her stomach and was echoed in her head. How had they lived like this for so long?

Jack squeezed her shoulder once, and rubbed small circles on her back until she fell asleep.

She woke up alone but more alive than she’d felt in a week.

*****

It wasn’t until Jack moved closer to the rest of them that she realized they had a proximity problem. The headaches and the nightmares came and went with the distance between them. Some nights, across the hall wasn’t close enough, and she woke to find him on her floor. Those were the best days. The days that she felt whole again.

Teal’c managed to radiate a quiet approval of their new arrangement. It was an improvement for all of them. Daniel didn’t question her about it right away, but there was no way to hide the fact that Jack was spending too much time in her room, so it wasn’t unexpected.

His timing wasn’t normally the best, but the day he found her by the open panel that had tried to kill her, she was glad to see him.

“Daniel,” she said when he appeared around the corner. He looked like he’d sought her out for a purpose and she was more than happy to redirect him. “You’re just in time.”

Daniel was understandably surprised by that. She’d been avoiding him, because she didn’t want to deal with all the questions she could see in his eyes. “For what?” he asked.

She held up her zat and gave him the best smile she could manage. “I’m going to zat this thing.”

“Is that a good idea, Sam?”

Sam shrugged her shoulders. She had so few ideas about the ship that she didn’t have the luxury of only choosing the good ones. “Maybe. I’m hoping it will overload the controls.”

She stood at what seemed like a safe distance and fired the zat. They both watched as the energy was absorbed. The light inside the panel flared brightly for a moment, but the door stayed locked. Her shoulders sagged. It was like the ship really was alive, and it hated her. She hadn’t hated technology this much since she’d met the Za’tarc detector.

“That was anticlimactic,” said Daniel.

“Damn it.” She walked over to the panel and peered inside. Everything looked happy and non-overloaded. She wanted to smash it.

Daniel watched her with furrowed eyebrows. “Maybe bullets would be better,” he said.

“I’m thinking C4.”

“That sounds more like one of Jack’s plans,” said Daniel. It was a forced jumping off point to the conversation he really wanted to have. She should have seen it coming. “Speaking of Jack--” he said.

She cut him off before he could get started. "It's complicated," she told him. Not because it was. It was a simple thing, really. Clear cut in a way that things between the two of them had never been. They’re not having the sex that Daniel assumed they were. It was just that she physically couldn’t stand to be apart from him.

"No, Sam. It's not.” And she didn’t expect this from him, this disapproval. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“It’s too late for that,” she snapped.

She shot at the panel again because she couldn’t shoot Daniel, and they were both surprised when the door opened.

Daniel followed her inside and they stood together in front of a large glass screen. It was the only thing in the room. “This is weird,” said Daniel, his interest in her and Jack forgotten for the moment.

“Yeah,” she agreed. She walked around the transparent screen. There were lines running through the glass like a maze.

Daniel touched the surface and four red lights appeared. Two close together, and two more separate and moving in opposite directions. “What do you think it is?”

“Go get Colonel O’Neill and Teal’c,” she told Daniel. Whatever it was, they should know about it. Important or not, it was the first new thing they’d discovered since the day they got out of the cells.

Daniel left and she watched the colored lights drift around the screen. She realized what they were long before Daniel returned with Teal’c and Colonel O’Neill in tow.

“It’s us,” she told them.

“What’s us?” Colonel O’Neill asked. Daniel hadn’t done a very good job of relaying the information.

“This.” She pointed to the screen. All four lights were crowded into one space now. “These dots. It’s tracking us.”

Daniel stood next to her and rubbed the bridge of his nose. She wondered if he missed his glasses. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yeah.” One of the lights had tracked Daniel while he fetched Teal’c and Colonel O’Neill. She could see now that the lines on the glass were the corridors and rooms of the ship. She touched the screen to point out the layout to the others. Her finger grazed one of the lights and a series of symbols appeared next to it.

“Huh,” said Daniel. “That’s interesting.” He stepped into his own small world of symbols and languages. Sam backed away so he could study the screen. He went through and touched all of the lights, some more than once, making new information appear. “Maybe it’s doing more than tracking us.”

“Perhaps it is monitoring our physical status,” said Teal’c. Sam decided he was right as soon as he finished the thought. Of course the ship would be monitoring them remotely.

“I don’t know yet,” said Daniel. “But it would make sense to keep tabs on our health.” He looked at Sam and added, “Mental and physical.” He kept flipping back and forth between two of the lights, noticing things that the rest of them would have missed. Daniel had been dealing with new and strange symbols for a long time. “Look,” he said. “These two have the same symbols.”

 

*******

 

The new room gave Daniel something to do in the same way the escape pods gave Sam something to do. They both killed a lot of time with little to show for it.

She still spent most of her days poking around the pods, trying to make something happen, only now she did it with more than her thoughts for company. Jack had started joining her. Mostly, he was quiet, content to watch her work day after day, trying to make up for the days he hadn’t seen her at all.

He was sitting on the floor, watching her think. It was something he’d always done, but he was usually more subtle about it. Not subtle enough that she hadn’t noticed, because he was something she paid very close attention to.

“I think they’re frequencies,” she said, breaking the long silence.

“What?”

“The symbols on the tracking system. I think the ship put some sort of tracking device in us, and ours are set to the same frequency.”

She watched him while he thought that through, knowing he’d come to the same conclusion she had. “So they’re talking to each other?”

“Yeah. Something like that.” Something a lot like that.

He shifted and stretched out on his back. His shirt was tight over his stomach, and Sam found something else to look at. She sat on the floor next to him for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes she wondered how they were going to go back to their lives if they ever got home. She’d convinced herself several times over the years that she was over him. It didn’t matter that it was just a lie she told herself as long as it got her through the day. And it had. Day after day after day.

That was going to be impossible after this.

“Well, that’s just creepy,” he said.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “But if it’s some sort of technology, we should be able to disable it.”

“Without frying our brains?”

That was a guarantee she couldn’t make. But they were certainly going to have to try.

“Hopefully.”

 

*****

 

The four of them were on the bridge when the ship stopped for the last time.

"Do you think we'll ever get home?" They were too far apart to have a normal conversation, and the high dome in the middle of the room tried to pull Daniel’s words away.

She yelled back to him from the opposite wall. "I hope so."

When the ship dropped out of hyperspace for the last time, they ignored it. There was no reason to think this time would be any different from the last six times. They kept yelling at each other until Teal’c noticed that the ship had been still for too long.

When he walked to the front screen, Sam followed, curious but not concerned. Mostly she expected the ship to take off as soon as she started to feel hopeful. For a moment, there was nothing to see. It wasn’t like the movies; they didn’t call it space for nothing. She was about to turn away when a large debris field slid into view.

Colonel O’Neill and Daniel joined them at the front of the ship. The debris field was vast and dense. There was no way they could have known that the mass of rocky space junk was going to change everything again.

Colonel O’Neill shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe this is where the ship was programmed to go.”

"This?" asked Daniel. “It’s nothing but rocks.”

“Yeah, well.” He tilted his head, trying to make sense of it and failing. “I don’t know. Carter?”

Sam recognized the debris for the lifeless remains of a planet that it was. She couldn’t decide if this was a good thing or not. The kind of aliens who roamed the universe kidnapping people might not be the kind of aliens they wanted to meet. Maybe it was better this way. "I think this used to be a planet."

"What happened to it?" asked Daniel. Sometimes their faith in her was endearing. Other times it made her want to scream how the fuck do you expect me to know that?

This was one of the other times.

"It's hard to say without some detailed sensor readings," she said, keeping the how the fuck do you expect me to know that? to herself.

It was a big planet, that much she could tell with her own eyes. The puzzle and the science made her feel more normal than she had in weeks. She caught Colonel O’Neill looking at her and it felt like home. "Nothing good,” she told them. “That much I can say for sure."

"Thanks, Sam." And then, because Daniel could be an asshole too. “I think Jack’s crappy sense of humor is rubbing off on you.”

Teal’c offered up a long-suffering “Indeed”, and she grinned at the both of them.

They didn’t have long to enjoy the moment.

 

********

The ship came alive around them and things went from bad to worse.

It seemed safe enough at first. The ship scanned the remains of the planet one piece at a time and reassembled them in a holographic display above their heads. They all watched, fascinated, while the planet took shape. It was a beautiful planet with a massive ring system, and it rotated slowly until the display shut off and an unmistakable wail started.

High-pitched and repetitive, a self-destruct sounded the same in any language.

“Oh, fuck me,” Colonel O’Neill muttered. “Let’s go.”

Daniel looked around. “Where?”

It was a fair question, but he gave the only answer available. “The escape pods.”

“Sam said they didn’t work.”

“Perhaps they only work in emergency situations,” said Teal’c. Sam was grateful for his optimism.

It wasn’t like they had options. “It’s possible,” she told Daniel, trying to put more faith in that statement than she felt.

They might as well die with a sense of hope.

 

*******

They had no way of knowing if they had seconds or minutes before the ship exploded around them, so they ran to the open bay.

They picked the escape pod they’d been storing their gear in. Back when they were entertaining the idea of getting one to work. Like the ship, the escape pods had no seats, so they stood together by the back wall. The door settled into position with a sense of finality. The door had never closed before, and Sam started to think they might live.  
Jack’s mind was flooded with regret and she took his hand. When too many seconds passed, she closed her eyes and tightened her grip.

Her stomach dropped when the escape pod was finally ejected from the ship. She opened her eyes to a fine web of blue light. Another scanner, highlighting their wide-eyed shock at being alive. Planets and images flashed on a holographic screen. Sam could only hope that it was looking for something compatible with their physiology. It settled on a planet that looked great on the screen. Blue and white, it looked a lot like Earth.

And, holy shit, even the escape pods had hyperdrives.

The alien escape pod did better than just dumping them off on a planet with a breathable atmosphere.

They landed without incident and Sam held her breath when the door opened. It was stupid; she knew that. Either they could breathe or they couldn’t. Holding her breath wasn’t going to change that.

Teal’c stepped out into the warm, moist air, not holding his breath as far as she could tell. He also wasn’t dying. That was a good sign so she took her first shallow breath of the humid air. It felt clean and tasted like sunshine. They’d been breathing recycled air for so long.

The door of the ship was facing the wrong way so they didn’t see it right away. They circled around, and there it was, looming out of the low fog coating the ground. Colonel O’Neill stopped short and grabbed her arm. “Carter? Is that what I think it is?”

“God, I hope so.”

He patted the side of the small ship before leaving it behind. “Best escape pods ever.”

Daniel was practically buzzing with excitement, but Teal’c seemed suspicious, and why not? There was a good chance none of it was real.

“Look, Sam,” said Daniel. “It’s a stargate.”

“I see that,” she said.

“Is someone going to dial out, or what?” asked Colonel O’Neill.

“They’ll have to assume our GDO has been compromised.” She was stating the obvious. They had protocols for a reason, and it was going to take some work to get the SGC to let them in. Sam went back inside the ship to pick through their gear. Her radio was dead, but Daniel’s had plenty of power. He was always forgetting to turn it on. She jogged back to the DHD and handed it to Daniel.

“Here you go,” she said. “Do your thing.”

 

********

Daniel went first, still chatting on the radio with General Hammond like he’d missed having a wider audience. General Hammond had a soft spot for SG-1 and it hadn’t taken as much convincing as it should have to get him to open the iris.

Sam counted to sixty and walked to the top of the stairs. She stopped and looked back at Teal’c and Colonel O’Neill before stepping through the wormhole.

She was greeted by a blinding pain in her head and a small contingent of well-armed Marines. A half-dozen weapons followed her down the ramp. She made it to the bottom before collapsing.

The first thing she saw after regaining consciousness was Jack’s shoulder. He was holding her tight to his chest and she could feel the panic coming off him in waves. She turned and buried her face in his neck.

“Carter?”

“You were gone,” she said.

“I know. It’s okay. I’m here now.” He loosened his grip on her, and sat back on his knees.

“I think we have a problem,” she said.

“Well, fuck,” he said.

Exactly.

********

The medics wrestled her on to a stretcher she insisted she didn’t need.

Janet kept glancing at her, and she could feel General Hammond’s sharp eyes through the ballistic glass. Jack wouldn’t let go of her hand, and no amount of creative writing on their reports was going to fix this. Her career will never survive this moment. Jack squeezed her fingers and shook his head, like he could will the consequences of their entrance away.

Daniel did his best to fill Janet in while they rolled toward the infirmary. Sam tried to follow their conversation, but her brain was too busy screaming about the implications of what had just happened.

The infirmary was chaotic and loud. She’d forgotten what it was like in a world with more than just the four of them. It felt too crowded, too full. She was grateful when Janet pulled the curtain shut around her bed. Isolating her from the world.

Janet let her team hover while she ordered tests and took notes. It was something she normally discouraged, and Sam took it as a bad sign.

A few hours and a few hundred tests later, they were all piled on two beds waiting for their results when Janet click-clacked back into the room.

“Well,” she said. “You were right, Sam. Take a look at this.”

Sam looked at the MRI results. The device was implanted deep in the temporal lobe of each of their brains. “It reminds me of Urgo.”

Janet nodded. “That’s what I thought. I’m out of my element with this.”

 

**********

 

In the end, the transmitters died on their own.

They were back on base for two days when they noticed the difference.

The four of them were in the mess hall, enjoying real food when Colonel O’Neill’s forkful of meatloaf stopped midway to his mouth. “Hey,” he tapped the side of his head. “I think these things are running out of batteries.”

Sam concentrated on his emotions, but they were dull and hard to read. Could it be that simple? “Maybe they were drawing their power from the ship.” Like Harlan’s creations.

He shrugged his shoulders, never one to care about the technical details. “Yeah, I guess so.”

The day they were finally cleared, Sam headed straight home. Halfway to her house, she had to pull over to stare at the horizon. The world seemed to have grown while they were away.

Her house grudgingly welcomed her home. It felt disused and empty, and sometimes she felt like the house knew that it deserved better. She opened all the windows in an effort to clear out the lingering sense of abandonment. She worked her way through all the rooms, cleaning in an effort to keep herself away from her phone. She’d grown so accustomed to his presence, physically and mentally, the urge to call him was overwhelming.

She was sitting in her backyard enjoying fresh air and contemplating her future when Colonel O’Neill showed up. He was carrying the pizza she’d ordered and a six pack of beer. Pizza and beer wasn’t something they did without the rest of the team, but maybe they were past the point where having chaperones made any kind of sense.

He walked around the side of the house and stepped on to her low deck. “I ran into the pizza guy out front,” he said. “I knocked, but-” He didn’t finish the sentence, and she didn’t start one. The crickets started chirping, filling the silence while Sam watched the sun slip down into the tree line.

Her deck wasn’t big enough for patio furniture, so Jack stood there holding the food until she decided what to say. “Come on, she said. “Let’s go inside.”

He followed her through the back door and into the kitchen. It was darker in the house. She turned on some lights to chase away the gloom. They sat at the counter and ate pizza straight out of the box. She didn’t bother offering him a glass for his beer. He tapped his bottle against hers. “It’s like being back in college,” he said.

“With better beer,” she added. Because college beer tended to be of the cheap but plentiful variety.

“We need to talk,” he announced when he set down his second bottle. Of course they needed to talk. Talking was the only thing they had left at this point.

She closed the pizza box and moved into the living room. Jack was clearly set on dealing with what had happened, and Sam wanted to be comfortable for the fallout. She sat in the corner of the couch, pulled her feet up, and waited for him to start the conversation.

“I’ve been in Hammond’s office all day.”

Sam closed her eyes and leaned back. That was unexpected. She could still see the look in the General’s eyes when she’d woken up in the gate room with Jack pulling her up from the floor and into his arms.

“He’s splitting us up.” Jack looked down at his feet for a moment, and she missed the transmitters. “It should have been done a long time ago,” he said. “You’ll be getting your own team.”

She laughed at that. Her own team was the last thing she deserved. She hadn’t even been responsible enough to get herself reassigned when it became clear that she didn’t belong anywhere near Jack. “My own team? As a reward for fucking up?”

“Ouch, Carter.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah. Anyway, you’ll be in charge of some science geeks.” He looked straight at her. Setting her up to hear something important. “You’ll officially be on loan from Area 51.”

That was some roundabout maneuvering. General Hammond must have been working on it for some time. Sam’s stomach felt tight, like she might throw up. Not only had General Hammond had been expecting this, he’d planned for it. “Did you tell him-” She couldn’t finish the thought but didn’t need to.

His expression told her all she needed to know about the conversation. She wondered if he’d just blurted it out or if he’d tried to be tactful. “He said that what happened ‘doesn’t count.’”

“Doesn’t count? Are we keeping score?”

Jack sat on the couch and rubbed the back of his neck. He looked tired, and it wasn’t fair of her to take her anger out on him. “I don’t know, Carter,” he said. “I told him that I wanted it to count.”

He got up to leave when she didn’t say anything. She didn’t need alien technology to interpret his emotions. “Yeah, well,” he said. “I just wanted to be the one to tell you.”

“Wait.” She grabbed his forearm and pulled him back down. Her fingers felt warm where they were touching him. “I’m sorry. It’s just-- It’s a lot to take in.”

“I know.” Of course he knew. It was a lot for both of them, but he’d had more time to process it. “I’m going to go. But maybe we could-- We could try. Something.”

His words were stilted and awkward but sincere, and something she never would have had the courage to say. He didn’t know what ‘something’ was anymore than she did. They’ve done everything backwards and sideways. Where would they even start?

She reached out and brushed her thumb over his lips. Her heart felt like it was trying to escape through her throat. She wondered if she’d ever lose that sense of exhilaration whenever she touched him. She hoped not, and more importantly, she realized that she wanted to find out. More than anything she’d wanted in a long time.

“I think ‘something’ sounds like a perfect place to start,” she told him.


End file.
